Google wants the Supreme Court to reverse a decision concluding that the media giant could be held liable for hijacking data on unencrypted Wi-Fi routers via its Street View cars.

The legal flap should concern anybody who uses open Wi-Fi connections in public places like coffee houses and restaurants. That’s because Google claims it is not illegal to intercept data from Wi-Fi signals that are not password protected.

Google’s Street View vehicles, which are mapping the globe, were housing Wi-Fi sniffing hardware that was gathering data on the MAC addresses of routers in neighborhoods to better Google's location services. But Google was also pulling snippets of data from unprotected Wi-Fi networks, and it claimed it did not know it was sniffing packets.

That prompted a US Federal Appeals Court, hearing a dozen combined lawsuits, to conclude that "Congress did not intend to condone such an intrusive and unwarranted invasion of privacy when it enacted the Wiretap Act to protect against the unauthorized interception of electronic communications."

The Federal Communications Commission in 2012 fined Google $25,000 for stonewalling its investigation into the packet-sniffing debacle. The scandal came to light in 2010 after German authorities began asking questions. Google has abandoned the practice of payload sniffing.

The Mountain View, CA-based search giant maintains that unencrypted Wi-Fi networks are "radio communications" akin to police and fire bands as well as AM/FM radio. As such, Google argues they are exempt under federal wiretapping statutes.

"The decision below manufactures a definition of 'radio communication' that is at odds with established federal law and with the text, structure, and legislative history of the Wiretap Act," (PDF) Google told the justices.

The justices did not comment on whether the court would review the case.

David Kravets / The senior editor for Ars Technica. Founder of TYDN fake news site. Technologist. Political scientist. Humorist. Dad of two boys. Been doing journalism for so long I remember manual typewriters with real paper.